Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace, until the start of the week Monday morning.

Now you may already have kids, you may not have them yet, but if you could teach your

kids just one valuable lesson. The most valuable lesson that you think they would benefit from

in their life. What would it be? You know, I have some friends who believe the most important thing

is that their child feels loved. No matter what else happens, that's the most important thing,

that's the most valuable lesson. I have another friend who thinks it's honestly he always says to his

son, you know, I don't care what you do as long as you tell me the truth. That is the most important

thing in life. And a friend asked me the other day, what would I teach my sons? Or do I try to

teach my sons? Well, when my sons sit still for long enough to actually listen to me, you know,

I will always come back to the four foundations that were taught to me at the beginning of the

monastery. I genuinely have found them the most useful things. I've still found them useful to

this day and because they're not beliefs, because they're just sort of fundamental truths in life,

we can't really avoid them, we'll find them in every part of our life. And even when one doesn't

connect or relate, you can always sort of lean on another of the four. So I'm cheating a little

bit. It's not just one thing, it's four things, but I thought I'd share them with you.

The first one is this idea of a precious human life, the idea that, you know, we might take life

for granted, especially when things aren't going our way, when we're not enjoying life perhaps,

there is a sense of taking it for granted. We don't appreciate just how precious it is.

And it often takes, perhaps, the death of a loved one or a close friend or something that really,

really shocks us to cut through that chatter in the mind to get us to a point where we realize

just how fortunate we are to be alive and to recognize those things that are going well.

So that's the first one I feel like that's just useful on any given day.

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